It can be far simpler, on certain route MC might turn out to have STD if he slept with, say, any of Quinn's prostitutes. Or any girl from the "others". It'll then be precisely "a result of your own action".
That it may happens on one route but not on another is irrelevant. This kind of differences between routes can happen in this kind of games. And no, before someone starts screaming, it's not "bad writing". There's no obligation for the game to allow the player metagame based on what they saw in other routes.
Yes it does, that's what writing a consistent story means. Different routes should give complementary stuff, but consistent with each other. Getting an STD could be a punishment for some routes, but make it so that a same scene has different results depending on a later decisions would make the game a worse experience and would break logic. You don't have to allow metagame, but your story would suffer for it.
you see the game as a single story with different decisions. so all actions happen on all branches at the same time and have the same results as long as it's not branch exclusive. and each result comes immediately after a decision. you fuck someone with STD, you get STD
another way to look at it would be considering each branch as its own story. then it only has to be consistent within that branch and "same" actions on different branches don't have to have same results. you fuck someone who has STD on another branch, you don't get STD because this branch has some other shit that the branch with STD doesn't
it makes writing complicated but not necessarily bad (or maybe I'm too used to time travel and alternate universe stories)
"or maybe I'm too used to time travel and alternate universe stories"
I'm actually very surprised you say that. For time travel stories is extremely important to keep cause and effect perfectly clear. If the state of the world is the same it will always produce the same result, if it doesn't it means something was changed. At the end of episode eight he is already infected or he isn't. Choosing Jill or not can't change it. The only way I see of this happening is... time travel
. Not choosing Jill makes it so something travels back and makes some girl that on a Jill path wasn't infected get infected. Anything else would be a break of cause and effect. The engaging part of these stories is seeing how some actions change the outcome. The result doesn't have to be immediate, but it has to be sound. Getting an STD or not two months later because you decided to be with one person or another is the kind of thing that would ruin a story.
Let's say the MC's mother is a Burgmeister on Jill's route, so you get a Romeo and Juliet kind of story on Jill's path; a Morgan on Sage's so you're her cousin; Miranda's sister so you're Tommy's cousin on Josy and Maya's; or James's sister on Bella's path. Do you think this would be a compelling story? (Well, some of these sound hilarious, and imagining the discussions the day after release sound extremely fun
. But that's besides the point).
honestly, I don't even know why we're talking about STDs, I just have nothing better to do than arguing about non-linear storytelling with different timelines
I... I don't remember anymore how this started
